All children are born to grow, to develop, to live, to love
by Mech Anon
Summary: Ginny Weasley needs something the Wizarding UK doesn't offer and in the process of finding it discovers the Wizarding world needs it too.


Ginny Weasley first saw a healer when she took a bludger to the shoulder during the World Cup and played her last quidditch match. It wasn't that strange, between a competent medi-witch, a good apothecary and well-read relative a witch or wizard could reasonably expect to never need the professional services of a healer but one bludger to the shoulder, another to the back and ploughing face first into the pitch at full speed on an international standard broom was beyond even the team medi-witch. Like all professional quidditch contracts hers covered medical treatment due to injuries obtained during training or competition so she never saw the bill for a week at St Mungo's under the care of the Artefacts Accidents.

She was eleven when she first saw a medi-witch in a professional capacity, Madam Pomfrey's tired but honest concern was a rather different experience to the local medi-witch's apathy. She was born at home with Pandora Lovegood helping out. Her father took a bag of potatoes and a basket of eggs down as a thank you and came back with a baby blanket Ginny slept with until Hogwarts and wrapped her own children in. There hadn't been the money to call out the local medi-witch and even if there had there wouldn't have been time, her mother's sixth labour was done within half an hour of her waters breaking while she chased the twins around the yard.

She was never sick beyond her mother's capabilities to heal and neither were her brothers. There was the time Charlie plough head first into the ground and Bill at Molly's instruction called the local medi-witch but Ginny didn't see her. Instead the twins, Ron and her were bundled up in Percy's room playing Old Maid until Arthur brought them down to eat bread and cheese and sour apples before he put them to bed. When she woke in the morning Molly was reorganising the family budget at the table and Charlie was propped up on the sofa reading a book about dragons, bruises colouring his face and a bandage wrapped around his forehead. The medi-witch had long since left.

She met the local medi-witch plenty. Late floo calls to Molly when she needed a hand, silver sickles passed over when Molly returned. Molly brewing potions in the kitchen when someone couldn't themselves or pay apothecary prices. The fat pig they slaughtered one autumn after Molly had brewed a complex potion every day for a month. The goat whose cheese they ate for years when a baby was born alive.

Molly was who their neighbours called when they couldn't afford gold but they could barter or when they couldn't heal themselves but didn't want to call out a medi-witch. She was the person the order turned to when reporting that injury would be awkward. She taught them all how to heal minor injuries even if the experience made their stomachs turn but she didn't push for more from them if they weren't comfortable.

When she went to Hogwarts she had to be dragged to Madame Pomfrey the first time and she never quite got over the feeling that it wasn't necessary. Percy could have diagnosed a cold and Hermione brewed Pepper-Up as well as Molly by the time she was 12. It was a comfort knowing that she was surrounded by people who could heal her even if it meant coming down to Molly and Hermione reattaching one of Tonk's legs on the kitchen table one cold December morning and spending the post-war finding people with untreated injuries and curses sitting in the Burrow living room waiting for Molly or Lavender or Hermione to see them.

There was only one time she wished that there was something more available, something different available. After Tom, she dreamt of what he did with her body. She didn't remember sitting in the Infirmary or the Headmaster's Office directly after but she did when she woke. She remembered killing roosters with her bare hands and enjoying it. Of ordering the basilisk to kill and looking forward to it. Even if she didn't dream of what he did she heard him, telling her she was nothing without him, worthless to everyone but him, the youngest little weasel, why would Harry Potter the Boy-Who-Lived look twice. She never screamed after a dream but woke up shaking with tears.

The first night Hermione stayed she wrapped her skinny frame around her and held her firm with strength she shouldn't have had. Then she talked, asked questions about quidditch she didn't care about the answers to until Ginny was calm and lectured her to sleep about the importance of uniform cauldron thickness. She'd been checked for dark magic by Madame Pomfrey and Professor Snape and declared fine. In need of wholesome food and fresh air only. There wasn't any kind of treatment for bad memories. You just got over it or went mad. In the muggle world, Hermione said there were people who treated your thoughts. They had names for what was wrong with her and ways to make it stop, not that she could ever talk about it to a muggle. There wasn't anything like that in the Wizarding world and even if there had been they wouldn't have been able to afford it but there were benefits to Hermione's parents being dentists and Hermione's obsession with books and learning. Her parents didn't worry when Hermione wanted to read technical texts about general mental health or have self-help books for anxiety or stress. When Ginny wanted more specific texts about PTSD, depression, issues associated with child soldiers and victims of CSA, Hermione flirted with Tonks. Kissed her under Mrs Black's photo and asked her to break the rules only as far as a trip to Blackwell's, just the two of them. Managed to make it a trip to Blackwells and Indian meal in a tiny restaurant up a rickety staircase where the menu was in Urdu and the chef asked after Hermione's mother. Hermione giggled in bed with Ginny about holding hands and connecting over more than just a shared love Wizarding puzzles or their memories and awkward connection to the muggle world. Ginny dreamt of flying and for the first time since Harry brought Cedric's body back she woke with a dry face.

Ginny poured over those books. She learnt the cold harsh words for what Tom had done to her, for why she had let him, and why she was still letting him control her. How to redirect her mind when all she could hear was his voice. To identify whether she thought that or Tom. When she was over compensating or relying on external validation. That no matter what Tom said she mattered, and that Dean wasn't lying when he wanted to paint her. Harry might learn to like the idea of kissing a Weasley but she'd never be able to shut off Tom's voice when they were together she learnt those heated few weeks before Dumbledore died. They brought out the worst memories of Tom in each other and anyway she was fairly certain he'd have rather been kissing Ron from the wistful looks as he watched Ron head over heels with Lavender swing her around until they had a child for him to dote on. She enjoyed her relationship with Katie when they were on the same team, laughing tension free experimentation with Hermione and Dean and she loved Neville in a way that was all her, none of Tom in a way she'd never been able to separate her crush on Harry from Tom's obsession.

Those books taught her more than how to recover from Tom. She learnt how to gentle Remus after the transformations, reduce the simulation until he could cope but not take it all away so he floated away and couldn't connect to the world. How to draw Sirius back to now when all he could see was James and the good times. How to stop the self-destructive anger in its tracks when all he could focus on was James dead and Peter's betrayal. She couldn't save him from himself though, make him treat Kreature better so he wouldn't lie and stop him falling to his cousin's curse. So, Harry had another person to grieve, one less person to hold him in this world and another reason to hate himself.

She learnt how to pull scared children back to themselves when their eyes were unseeing after yet another detention with the Carrows. How to build on the Death Eaters' belief, student and teacher alike, that the castle itself was against them until they were constantly scared, jumping at shadows and attacks equally. How to lead her team to victory from the jaws of defeat. How to teach a frightened first year to mount a broom and successfully fly competently without ever letting the rest of their class know the details of their fears. In her opinion psychology was the best thing muggles ever came up with. The only thing they had she wanted more of. The reason she sat up at three in the morning with a baby on her lap reading an OU text as she took a BSci in Psychology and Counselling so other children wouldn't have to silence their tears and just get over it.

She couldn't take blood like her mother and sister-in-law. She couldn't fix a person's body with nothing but a wand when it was cursed and bleeding but she could make a person believe in themself again. Make a child, flinching and untrusting with dark glittering eyes so much like their potion's professor, begin to trust to open up. To smile and laugh. To admit mistakes without fear of inappropriate punishment.

Ginny was in her twenties the first time she saw a healer professionally, she was in her thirties the first time someone called her Counsellor Weasley. In her fifties the first time one of her students came to her and said I want to do what you do. She couldn't be who she would have been without Tom or forget what he did to her but she could make the voices stop for others. She could watch her students graduate, a healer and counsellor and that was enough.


End file.
